The politics of abortion

CHARLES GOODHART

There have been a lot of changes lately in laWs affecting morals and conscience, brought about by Private Members' Bills with the government disclaiming responsibility. Cap- ital punishment, censorship, homosexuality, divorce, and abortion come to mind, with euthanasia perhaps next on the list. None of them had any direct mandate from the electorate. But Private Members' Bills cer- tainly do something for morale in the House of Commons, when the humblest back- bencher can vote as he pleases.

If anyone wants to push through contro- versial legislation like this, special tactics are needed. A few hundred MPS have to be convinced, and it helps to persuade them that the electorate want it too. .Mrs Made- leine Simms* now tells how it was done with the Abortion Act 1967, in whose triumphant progress she had a principal part as general secretary of the Abortion Law Reform Association. It is a fascinating story.

ALRA was founded in 1936, but by 1960 it still had under 200 members and had proved politically ineffective. Then Mrs Simms ap- peared together with Mrs Diane Munday, who had recently been forced to have an abortion done privately in Harley Street, having been refused by the NHS. Mrs Simms soon got herself co-opted to the ALRA com- mittee by persuading them to let her start a Newsletter. Then in 1963, after a fair amount of skulduggery, which is vividly described, the chairman was ousted and replaced by Mrs Vera Houghton, the energetic general sec- retary of the international Planned Parent- hood Federation who, as wife of the present Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour party, had some useful political contacts. Next, Mrs Munday was elected to the com- mittee, by four votes to three; and within a few months not without hard feelings they had got rid of the general secretary, who was followed into oblivion by the rest of *Abortion Law Reformed Madeleine Simms and Keith Hindell (Peter Owen £3.25)

the old committee before the year was out.

After that things really started to move and in the next three years four Bills were

promoted, all drafted by Glanville Williams, the eminent academic lawyer who is now president of ALRA. Lord Silkin's was the only one that really got off the ground and it sank with the 1966 election : which was a pity as Lord Silkin had a mind of his own and avoided some of the worst defects of the present Act.

Then the big chance came when David Steel, a young and newly-elected Scottish Liberal MP, drew third place in the ballot. His first preference was for Border Develop- ment, dear to Scottish hearts, but frowned upon by the government. So, after toying with fox-hunting, . noise abatement, and homosexuality, he finally plumped for abor- tion; and thereupon . found himself the mouthpiece of an experienced extra-par- liamentary pressure group who knew exactly what they wanted, which was as near as they could get to abortion on demand. They met with Steel and 'after two sessions of this committee Steel's Bill emerged much as ALRA wanted it. As yet Steel had only a limited grasp of the subject and had not de- cided for himself the central issues.' Poor Mr Steel's relations with his supporters are described as 'uneasy', and at one stage he was accused of betrayal in trying to placate the BMA. With evident sincerity he has always protested that his Bill was never in- tended to permit abortion simply on de- mand, a claim repeated in his rather less than enthusiastic foreword to the present book. That wasn't Parliament's intention either but, whether we like it or not it is what we have got, at least for anyone pay- ing for it privately.

There were no holds barred in the sub- sequent fight. ALRA 'wrote to thirty-five sym- pathetic columnists asking for their personal cooperation in correcting the impression put about by opponents that the Bill allowed abortion on demand', and the BBC and the posh Sunday papers backed the Bill from the start. Seven thousand letters were sent, and

there Were full-page advertisements in The

SPECTATOR and five other weeklies, urging people to write to MPS. In April 1967 letters

were written to .1,200 newspapers opposing

a petition for a Royal .Commission, which collected 530,000 signatures none the less.

Several surveys by National Opinion Polls

Ltd were commissioned, and released at strate- gic moments to show about three to one

in favour of reforming the law—not the same thing, incidentally, as approving the changes actually proposed. Opinion polls are a dangerous weapon in the hands of pres- sure groups responsible for devising the questions, which can easily be worded to get

biased answers: as Mrs Simms is quick to

point out for a Gallup Poll organised by the opposition, which showed substantial major-

ities against several important provisions of

the Bill. All this cost money, of course, and it is interesting to see that most of it came from the us, as AILS got grants of $24,500 from a Foundation in California, which was more than half their total funds.

Most doctors and nurses, while favouring some reform, remained firmly opposed to

the Bill, and the Royal College of Obstetri-

cians and Gynaecologists voted 192 to five against abortion otherwise than where there was a real risk to the mother's health. But the Anglican clergy never showed much stomach for the fight.

In Parliament things sounded like a proper muddle, but the government, and especially

Mr Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary, strained official neutrality beyond the breaking point towards the end. At some stage Steel's original wording, which had specified serious risk to the life or of grave injury to the health' was emasculated by cutting out 'serious' and 'grave'. And right at the end in

the Lords the Lord Chief Justice produced an amendment to make abortion legal 'if con-

tinuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman . . . greater than if the pregnancy were termi- nated'. As Lady Summerskill immediately pointed out, that brings every abortion within the law since there is practically no risk at

all to the mother's life in an abortion nowa-

days, so this will always be less than the very small but still not wholly non-existent risks

in normal childbirth. But this point was not taken up and the amendment was accepted without a division.

Mrs Simms takes it for granted through- out her book that abortion is no more than

another method of contraception, messy and

undesirable to be sure, but with no question of any rights of the child to be considered.

any more than if it had never been conceived

at all. She flatly states that 'medically.and legally the embryo and foetus are merely

parts of the mother's body'. And that's that. with no suggestion that there might be other medical or legal opinions on a proposition that makes biological nonsense.

An official inquiry into the Abortion Act of 1967 is soon to start work. It is to be con- cerned only with the practice of abortion. and not with the principles underlying the Act: rightly so, for principles are a matter for Parliament. But it looks as though we may not have seen the end of the abortion battle after all.

Charles Goodhart, who is a biologist and a Fellow of Gonville and Coins College, Cam- bridge, is a member of the Executive COW' mittee of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children